Pocket guide connects vulnerable with community resources

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This article was published 09/04/2024 (555 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s a new pocket guide designed to save lives.

Six years and two major overhauls later, 30,000 copies of an updated guide to housing, food and health-care resources in Winnipeg’s downtown is ready for distribution to the city’s vulnerable and newcomers in need of community connections.

Members of the Winnipeg Outreach Network, a group comprised of community organizations that provide resources to vulnerable people, compiled the 11×17 street guide. The pamphlet includes a map and index listing resources such as addiction supports, shelters, safe spaces, free meals and clothing. The guides have already been distributed to two dozen community agencies and organizations.

“We designed this guide to be this pocket-friendly resource with potentially live-saving interventions in it,” said Winnipeg Outreach Network co-chair Tammie Kolbuck, who was part of the team that designed the first resource book six years ago.

The guide’s first iteration was cramped and hard to read, with far fewer resources than the city currently offers, Kolbuck said.

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen somebody who pulls out their tattered street guide that they’ve been carrying around with them for months,” she said. “To be able to give them a new guide is really satisfying.”

The changes made to the updated legend were based on identified needs and word of mouth from people who access services at Resource Assistance for Youth, where Kolbuck works as a street outreach worker.

Brittany Nygaard, co-chair of the Winnipeg Outreach Network and fellow street outreach worker, said the guide needed to be reflective of current issues — like the city’s opioid epidemic and rising costs of living.

“The inflation that we’re seeing in grocery stores is impacting everyone … so these food resources are really important, too,” she said.

The guide also includes updated information on walk-in clinics, family resources and has a greater focus on housing-specific programs, complete with icons for users with lower literacy rates.

At Spence Neighbourhood Association, street outreach and addictions worker Ari East is awaiting the new pamphlets to hand out to the community.

“During COVID there was a need for organizations to start working with each other, and that’s when it became obvious to us that there was a lot of things that each organization doesn’t know about each other,” he said. “So these maps make it way easier to pinpoint what service somebody needs and where exactly they can get it.”

For people unfamiliar with services the city offers, connecting with a place to take a shower or get a haircut can sometimes feel impossible, East said.

“All the things that you would need to take that next step from coming out of the streets … you can’t get a job if you’re not presentable and you can’t get a house if you’re not presentable.”

East said while the guides are a good tool for the short term, he’d like to see more long-term solutions for vulnerable people.

“If the city and the province and the federal government all have their hands tied and try to blame each other for the housing crisis and not incentivizing building housing over flipping housing, then I think the problem will just get bigger,” he said.

A recent Free Press-Probe Research poll showed 56 per cent of Manitobans worry about the affordability of homes, while 16 per cent are concerned about availability.

In February, Mayor Scott Gillingham called on city departments to work with business leaders and community groups in the hopes of having 8,000 new housing units approved by November.

nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca

Street Guide